Story: Modern day Princess and the Pea

Modern day Princess and the Pea

Once there was a businessman who lived in a wealthy city. When he had reached the proper age his mother the owner's company decided the time was right to find a bride. The businessman however was determined not to marry just any girl, and decided that only a "real" woman (no plastic surgeries) would do for his future wife. Therefore he set off to travel through all the world to find her, and although he searched in all the cities and met lots of women it didn’t quite go right. There were many women, but how was he to know whether they were real? There was something not quite right about them all. Eventually he came home again unsatisfied and unhappy, because he wanted to have a real woman so much.
Then one night a terrible storm blew in. The rain poured down and the lightning was so bright that it lit up the house as though it were daytime and the thunder was so loud that it set all the house dogs to howling. In the middle of the storm there was a knocking at the house door. The businessman’s father went to open it, and who should be there but a girl claiming to be a true woman. She was a terrible sight with her hair all over the place and her clothes soaked through, but she was invited in to stay for the night.
The businessman’s mother didn’t believe for a minute that she was a real woman and so she decided to test the young girl's claim. Without saying a word to anyone she went into the guest bedroom, took all the bedding off the bed, and laid a single pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and piled them on top of the pea, and then she laid twenty eiderdown quilts on top of the mattresses. On this the woman had to sleep all night. The next morning when the girl woke up, the businessman’s mother asked how she had slept.
"Oh, very poorly!" she said. "I scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, and now I am black and blue all over my body. It's horrible!"
They could see she was a real woman without a single plastic surgery because only a true woman could have such delicate skin as to feel a pea through twenty mattresses and twenty more quilts.
So the businessman decided to marry her immediately, because he knew he had found a real woman.

Eric Ramirez Rodriguez